the wisest of the prehistorians puzzle over
the mysteries that stare from the wall of this
shelter-on Mushroom Hill in the Drakens
berg-and from the walls of thousands more
over southern Africa.
As the days passed and we were led, puff
ing and panting, to other shelters, each fas
cinating and beautiful, we pelted Malan with
hundreds of questions. Some he could answer,
for some he ventured hypotheses, and for
others he amiably observed that our guesses
were as good as anyone's.
What were the pigments? Here the answer
is fairly well established. The basic colors
come from iron and other metallic oxides,
ground fine, possibly roasted, then mixed
with some binding material-probably ani
mal fat, though possibly milk, blood, honey,
or urine. At any rate, they had a marvelous
power of penetration into the sandstone, and
hence a great durability.
858
On one climb, Malan pointed to a nodule
of stone, about the size of a small fist, half ex
posed in a matrix of sandstone boulder. Such
nodules, he explained, were formed in cavities
in the sandstone in the dim geologic past;
Bushman artists pried them out, split them
neatly in half, and often found within them
small deposits of the metallic oxides that made
their paints. Next day, rummaging on the
floor of a shelter, my wife found one of the
stone halves. The hollow was the size of half
a walnut-a perfect, albeit empty, prehistoric
paint package.
Why, exactly as in the French and Spanish
caves, did the Bushman artists sometimes
blandly paint on top of pictures already there,
until the overlays were three or four deep
and why, occasionally, did the artists just as
carefully not cover what was already limned
on the rock?
One guess is that parts of the wall were